


Like a Real Live Koan, With Jogging

by wintercreek



Category: Diane Duane - Young Wizards series
Genre: Gen, Yuletide, challenge:Yuletide 2008, recipient:glaikery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-12-25
Updated: 2008-12-25
Packaged: 2017-10-14 08:58:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,126
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/147580
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wintercreek/pseuds/wintercreek
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>"A koan is a story ... generally containing aspects that are inaccessible to rational understanding, yet may be accessible to intuition."</i> - Wikipedia</p><p>Dairine has the whole Wizard's Manual in her head, but she doesn't know everything.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Like a Real Live Koan, With Jogging

**Author's Note:**

> For glaikery, Yuletide 2008.
> 
> Thanks to HHertzof and my ever-patient spouse for betaing, and to Wikipedia and the Internet for all the random knowledge.

In the first flush of her wizardry and with the full contents of the Manual in her, Dairine had never imagined that there would come a day when she'd need to consult outside sources. It's surprisingly easy to adapt to the breadth of knowledge available to her and the speed with which she can call upon it. It's something that she'll be able to keep, she thinks, long after her power drops and levels off.

She's pulling some high-profile assignments - with her power rating, how could she not? - but this one isn't a planet-mover or an earthquake-calmer, not a tangle with Lone One. This one is ordinary wizard's work, straightforward assistance to be rendered. It's a consult with a Canadian wizard, an Inuit boy in the far north. Global warming is starting to wreak havoc with the ice and the permafrost, but he thinks he can hold it off for a bit. "Cool," she says, grinning, when the assignment comes in. Gating north is a snap, wrapped a pocket of warm air over her parka.

Anvik laughs at her when she gets there. It's July. Even in Inuvik, north of the Arctic Circle, July means hot muggy air and mosquitoes. "You were expecting a blizzard, I take it?" Anvik teases her.

Dairine smiles ruefully. "Yeah. Guess I should have done my homework," she says, shucking parka and sweater and storing them in an otherspace pocket. "So what's up?"

"The temperature, unfortunately."

Dairine makes a face. "Yeah, yeah."

"It is both a joke and the truth. As the temperatures rise, the permafrost is thawing. And as the name suggests, it should not do that. Are you familiar with the normal state of things here?"

"Frozen soil and biomass a few meters down that never thaws, right? Or should never thaw, anyway." The houses in Inuvik are on stilts, just like Dairine's read about, to keep their heat from melting the permafrost in the winter. She's seen the pictures of houses sunk in to the ground because they were stiltless - the perils of modern and efficient central heat.

"Exactly. The thaw is bad in two ways - the obvious destabilization of the land under us, and the potential release of the carbon in the biomass that makes up part of the permafrost. Thaw the biomass, release the carbon as carbon dioxide, worsen the situation." Anvik frowns. "I doubt that wizardry can provide a long term solution without a substantial investment of time, but we should be able to prevent this in the short term."

Dairine's mind is already clicking through the possibilities. "It's got to be something that won't alarm the scientists, and ideally something we can build on for a long term fix. I mean, if we can clean up the pollution in Long Island Sound, we can probably do something to stabilize the permafrost."

Anvik raises a skeptical eyebrow. "You think a long term fix _is_ possible?"

It would be rude for Dairine to scoff. "Anything's possible, right? It's just a matter of determining how to do it."

"All right then. How?"

Dairine's never been failed by the racing of her brain, the range of knowledge about wizardry and the world she's crammed in to her skull. The first time she needs to do something and doesn't know how, it's a shock. She sinks to a sitting position in a barely controlled fall and blindly pulls Spot in to her lap, running absent fingers over his case and whispering, "I don't know." Spot chirrups sympathetically.

Anvik is sympathetic. "Perhaps one of us should visit the Central Library."

"Say what?"

"The Central Library. The repository of worldly, otherworldly, and wizardly knowledge?"

Dairine looks back blankly at him, then turns to Spot. "What do you know about this, little guy?"

Spot blinks his cursor at her, then prints, "The Central Library. Like non-wizardly libraries, a place of storage for many books on a variety of subjects. Unlike non-wizardly libraries, contains publications from all the worlds and from no worlds, including a broad set of works concerning wizardry."

"My mentor told me of it. The manual contains many things, but not everything can be dropped seamlessly in to our books, Dairine. Some things will not come to you; they must be sought and found."

"Okay. I'm in. Just tell me how to get there, and I'll go."

He does. And so she does.

* * *

"Dai stihó, cousins! I am on Errantry, and I greet you." Dairine's favorite part of being a wizard will always be the endless variety of persons and beings she can greet casually as cousins. It satisfies the part of her that always wanted to be Vulcan as she murmurs, "IDIC" under her breath. The beings greet her cheerfully in return, one waving a tentacle in a genial fashion, and the cat among them steps forward to ask if Dairine needs directions anywhere.

Dairine pauses for a moment and then decides that she and Spot need a hand on this one. "Yeah. Can you tell me how to get to the Central Library?"

"Follow the blue path and take the gate marked 'Central Library.'" The cat flicks her tail in feline amusement. "A difficult naming convention to decipher, to be sure. It's hard to find from here, but once you get closer you won't be able to miss it."

"Thanks!" Spot clicks urgently, so Dairine scoops him up and jogtrots down the blue path. They get there a minute before the next scheduled gating.

Interplanetary gating's been getting easier for Dairine as she adjusts to the feeling of being thrown from one rotating sphere to another. She's not sure she'll ever like it, but she can tolerate it these days. And so she's only moderately woozy when she lands in a wood-paneled foyer under a sign that reads "Central Library" in golden letters.

It's just like Anvik said it would be, the Library of which all others are but shadows on Plato's cave wall. Dairine's never met a library she didn't love. She inhales deeply to get the faintly dusty scent of knowledge in to her soul, then stoops to set Spot down. He spiders forward toward the desk and Dairine follows.

"Dai stihó," the Librarian murmurs. "How can I assist you in your quest?"

Dairine is tickled that her trip to the library is a "quest." "I seek knowledge on permafrost on the planet Earth, which orbits Sol." She glances down at Spot, waiting by her feet; he's silent.

The Librarian sweeps out one blue hand toward the marble arch at the entrance to the stacks.

"Uh, so I just go ahead, then?" Dairine's not sure it's an invitation.

The Librarian nods.

"Well, all right! Heel, Spot."

* * *

Three hours later, it's not all right. Dairine has not found one thing of use (although she has lost a truly phenomenal amount of time to browsing the shelves) and it's beyond her how these books are ordered.

"Okay. No more of this." There's a convenient chair in sight at the end of the aisle, so Dairine takes it and pulls Spot up in to her lap. "Spot. Query organizational structure of the Central Library. And format properly for context, please."

Spot's funny synthesized voice comes back to her. "Ranganathan's structure."

"Okay. Um, clarify?"

"S. R. Ranganathan's five laws of library science, developed in India in 1931. 1. Books are for use. 2. Every Reader his [or her] Book. 3. Every Book its Reader. 4. Save the time of the Reader. 5. The Library is a growing organism."

"And what does that mean for us? As the Readers - that's us, right?" Dairine pauses a moment to reflect that this day is turning out to be full of things she doesn't know.

"Colloquial format preferred?"

"Yes, Spot. Translation from library science to colloquial American, please."

"1. Direct access to books for patrons. 2. Access to all books for all patrons. 3. Every book will be most useful to at least one patron. 4. Efficient access to books and resources. 5. Adapt and change as necessary."

"Are these rules we can run?"

Spot whirs. "Affirmative."

"Execute rules three and four."

It's like being dropped in to some surreal, Alice-in-Wonderland scene. Dairine finds herself running full tilt across a landscape that shifts under her feet. It smells of carbon paper, and she looks down to find that it's a card catalog she's sprinting over. The force gripping her abruptly brings her to a halt and a card springs up before her. It's got a title in the beautiful scrolling characters of the Speech and a small handprint emblem. Dairine touches the handprint and feels her stomach drop like she's on a roller coaster. It's over in seconds, and she's standing before a bookcase and watching one volume slide out toward her.

" _Adaptive Stability,_ " she reads. " _The Art of Permanence and Change._ Sounds about right." Dairine takes the book in hand and turns toward the aisle. To her surprise, they're almost back to the desk. It's only a short walk to get back to the Librarian.

The Librarian blinks four eyes slowly at Dairine. "Did you enjoy your time in the stacks? Find everything you needed?"

"Yes, thank you. I need to take this one out - do I need a card?"

The Librarian is bemused. "You're in the Book, aren't you?"

Dairine nods.

"Then just sign here. If the book's needed back before you return it, I'll message you."

* * *

After the cool and dusty quiet of the Library, the Crossings is a shock to Dairine's system. Every interchange on every world buzzes like this, she knows, physical motion and hustle the yang to the yin of the Library's stillness. But the Library is not a place of immobility, just a place of hidden and intellectual movement. Movement that shifts and changes without disturbing the surface.

And it's then, so preoccupied that she almost chokes on her green noodles, that Dairine thinks she's got it. She eats abstractedly, typing notes in to Spot with one hand, until her gate is called.

Traveling back to Inuvik is a blur eaten up by Dairine's thoughts. She's much more comfortable this time, in her sandals and t-shirt, although she's kept the jeans in an attempt to ward off the omnipresent mosquitoes. "Anvik!"

His dark head pops up in a nearby window. The houses here are eye-catchingly bright, painted in reds, golds, greens, blues. Dairine would bet her allowance that they look stunning against the snow. Anvik clatters down the steps. "What have you found, cousin?"

"It's what found me, really," she admits. "The book found me, and I think it's just what we need. It's yin and yang at work in the permafrost, isn't it."

Anvik raises his brows, furrowing his forehead. "Yin and yang?"

"A balance, a shifting stability. Not all the permafrost is solid, right? There's a natural active layer, the stuff closer to the surface, that thaws and refreezes. That's what stood in the way of a quick fix - the obvious answer was to talk all of it in to being solid all the time, except that's not what the active layer does. We need to teach the active layer when to move and change, and when to be still."

"Yes, I think that's it." Anvik nods thoughtfully, reaching for the book. "May I?"

Dairine hands it over. "Yeah, check it out."

"This will work, I think. But I have forgotten my manners - cousin, how did you like the Library?"

"It's amazing! And- Well, I thought it would be a long time, if ever, before I ran up against something wizardly that I didn't know instantly. I've got the whole Manual in my head, you know?"

"Yes. I have read about your Ordeal."

Dairine flushes a little. "Yeah. Anyway, I was thinking that with the Manual in my head, all I'd ever need to do was call up the answers to problems. But that won't work for this kind of problem, because it's not a set answer. It's weird, but going to fetch the book was what made it come clear, more than the book itself."

"My mentor says that sometimes you work the wizardry, and sometimes the wizardry works you." He shrugs. "That's about as accurate as anything, I think. Come, let us discuss this inside."

Dairine and Spot follow him in. "I guess it's possible to know everything and not know _everything,_ hey little guy?" she muses, setting Spot down on his spidery legs.

Spot chirps.

Dairine pauses for a moment, then picks him up again to squint at his logo. It's not the usual wizardly apple now - it's a yin-yang symbol. "Well, why didn't you say so?" She gives his cover a pat, sets him down again, and goes to join Anvik.


End file.
